


“Your mother thinks we're dating and have been for over a year?”

by Aproclivity



Series: Tumblr-inspired fics [4]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Alcohol, Alex's mother is a force of nature no one can resist, F/M, False Assumptions, First Kisses, Not drunk enough for this, Strand's gotta Strand, meet the parents, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 05:12:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16633589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aproclivity/pseuds/Aproclivity
Summary: When Alex Reagan's parents unexpectedly come to town, Richard Strand decides to help her out and cook dinner for them. Unfortunately for them both, Alex's mother is a force of nature, and believes that they've been dating for over a year. Oops.The first chapter was formerly in 'I'm not drunk enough for this' but was moved to a stand alone story/verse. Takes place post 303's release date.





	1. "Colleagues occasionally meet one another's parents, especially if they just show up in town and one’s colleague has the inability to cook and hadn't cleaned ‘in a while.’”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nerdyvixen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdyvixen/gifts).



> The first chapter of this was posted under 'I'm not drunk enough for this' but Strand had to Strand everything up in the second chapter, so there was a huge tonal shift that I didn't think worked with the lighthearted rest of the fic. So here it is! Takes place before the actual release date of 303 (the night before actually!) 
> 
> Thanks to Nerdyvixen for the encouragement for this fic (especially the second chapter!) This fic will probably have a prologue in the form of the conversation mentioned about Alex's trip to Turkey and Simon. (Alex makes bad decisions, okay?)

“Oh god I'm so not drunk enough for this!” Alex Reagan was sitting in Richard Strand’s countertop wearing what was an actually nice dress and with bare feet. The dress may have been new but the sitting on the countertop was something old, another concession on he'd made to having his life invaded by an insufferably persistent reporter who butted into it. This was habit now, and had been ever since Alex had returned from Turkey and she spent so much time at his father's house. 

The shoes being off of course were to prevent scuff marks. Ruby would kill them both if Alex scuffed up the cabinet doors she'd replaced. 

But Alex stealing the wine with which he had been cooking was new, and so was her drinking it out of the bottle. With a sigh Strand just took a second bottle out of the rack before wordlessly handing her a goblet. 

“No.” The word was a sharp protest and Alex followed it up by taking a swig directly from the bottle. “I just told you, I'm so not drunk enough for this, Richard.”

Richard just cleared his throat for a moment before returning to the sauce that was rapidly coming together on the burner. When he spoke, his words were carefully neutral, and he didn't look at her when he said, “I wouldn't think that my meeting your parents was that big of a deal, Alex. Colleagues occasionally meet one another's parents, especially if they just show up in town and one’s colleague has the inability to cook and hadn't cleaned ‘in a while.’” One could practically hear the air quotes around those words. 

“Come on Richard. We're friends. Aren't we definitely friends at this point?” There was a hopeful little note in her voice that drew a sigh and a nod from him before he turned back towards her and picked up the bottle she'd been drinking and poured himself a glass before starting on the other bottle with a corkscrew. 

“Okay so. First an apology. I'm really sorry for this. All of this. And I do appreciate you making dinner more than words can say. But do you remember when you listened to the podcast and I talked about my mother calling me every Sunday and asking when I was going to get married?” Richard nodded, making his smug get on with it Alex face which meant that Alex Reagan, podcast host stumbled over her words. 

“So my mother thinks that we're dating. And have been for a while. Right around my vacation, she stopped asking me about getting married and instead started asking me about bringing home ‘the nice young man from your show.’” Alex was going to avoid her mother’s commentary on everything else Richard from the idea that he probably needed fattening up (at that point he did; Power Bars and no sleep do not a healthy body make) and Coralee letting him think she was dead for so long. 

For Richard’s part, he just stared at her utterly dumbfounded. So dumbfounded in fact that he didn't even make a biting or sarcastic comment about her mother calling him a ‘young man’. Instead all he could do was parrot back to her. “Your mother thinks we're dating and have been for over a year?” 

Alex just nodded quickly. “I've been telling her that we're just friends from the first time that she said it but she just keeps going on with ‘a mother knows when her child is in love with someone and is involved with them, Alexandria Margaret Reagan so don't go trying to pull one over on me.’”

At which point Richard proved that he was listening if nothing else because this time he just asked, “your mother thinks you're in love with me?” His voice is in that slow tone when he's trying to explain something to her in the most patronizing way possible. 

“Yes! That's what I'm telling you and apologizing in advance for them! After we” whatever the rest of Alex's sentence was going to be was lost to the sound of the antique doorbell and Alex's squeak of panic. 

“ _I_ am not drunk enough for this,” Richard muttered and took a long swig of wine bottle. It was going to be something of a night.


	2. “I am definitely not drunk enough to deal with your gloating mother when she gets to be right.”

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richard Strand has seen many unbelievable sights in his life, but he has never quite seen a force of nature like Alex Reagan's mother.

For the first time in a long time Richard Strand could remember (and his memory was quite good) he actually burnt something that he was cooking. The sauce was beyond repair now and he frowned at it in the way that he would have frowned at the cause were she present and not at current greeting her parents. 

Come to think of it, the last time he’d done it had been Alex’s fault as well. In his granite and stainless steel kitchen in Chicago the two of them had been arguing about something or other and he’d burned the steak he was cooking. Clearly, Alex was a menace when it came to things like this.

Trying to ignore the fact that Alex Reagan’s mother firmly believed that she was in love with him? Hardly. He was older and he was married in the most complicated way he could imagine. He was unlikable and brisk and didn’t believe in anything (well maybe other than her at this point. But that was a secret all her quiet questions would never draw from the steel box that he’d locked it back in the library that was his mind) and she believed in everything that he stood against. 

There was no way that she could love him. Not when every time they were close to something he bludgeoned her with Coralee. A shield of heartbreak to prevent more was probably no shield at all when it came down to it, but so far it had been effective. 

He needed another drink. 

Pouring himself another glass, Richard added the rest to a pot with some garlic and rosemary. It wouldn’t be the best sauce but a red wine reduction would work well with the beef in the oven and the risotto on the other burner. Thankfully that was still fine.

Rolling down his shirt sleeves and adjusting his tie, Richard wished the armor of his suit wasn’t currently in the hall closet where no doubt Alex had hung up her parents outerwear. Chiding himself for being pathetic and hiding in a kitchen that no longer needed him. He was Dr. Richard Strand and he walked into places that normal people didn’t dare to tread. Perhaps it was the normalcy of this that bothered him; it had been a long time since he’d met someone who was important to someone who was important to him. 

That he cared what sort of impression he would make on the Reagans bothered him and there was something in his mind that chided him for it. 

Since the two of them had started working together the voice that reminded him not to do things that might end in his getting hit had sounded like Alex Reagan and he could picture her expression of disappointment on her face when he preened for her. It was something he was good at ignoring but over the last three months, it had become ever more insistent and had forced him to see things that could be willfully ignored before. Alex’s lack of sleep, her fear, all of those things that he should encourage so she didn’t do something stupid like seek out Simon Reese should have been easy for him. They weren’t but they should be. 

Now however the chiding voice belonged to Coralee, a remnant of a time he wished with all of his being he could keep buried. Alex had unearthed it of course, digging the dirt from below his heels as he started to sink into it and the anger and the madness of his wife once more. The belief that she was alive was something that he’d once passed off as sentiment but now she was here with her melodrama and reminding him how bad connections are. 

To spite the voice, he grabbed another bottle of wine and four glasses on a tray before he took a deep breath and stepped forward to see what kind of force of nature had raised the annoyingly persistent woman who came bumbling into the order of his life and left both of them cradling pieces of it when they were done. 

Coming into the living room, at first Richard couldn’t say anything. Yes, he’d known Alex was adopted from early on in their partnership. The details had been shared over another bottle of overpriced wine at the Radisson the day that Sebastian Torres had been found. Still even with that knowledge when he meditate on what her family might be he always saw them small and dark in the same way that Alex was. 

No the woman who greeted him with a hearty hello wasn’t tiny. She had a good four inches on her daughter and her hair was blond and wavy down her back. He’d expected her to be dressed for church or dinner but instead he was greeted by her in overalls rolled to the knee with a white t-shirt below it. Sticking out one hand while putting the tray down with the other, the blond ignored both for launching herself into his arms for a hug. 

“We’re so pleased to finally meet you, Richard. I’ve been telling Alex for a year that what the two of you need is a vacation at home. Look at you, you need sleep and god knows that Alex always does. Our Alex was never good at sleeping through the night. The stories I could tell you! And don’t give us any of that Mr. and Mrs. bullshit. I’m Alice and this is Danny.”

Awkwardly he patted her back while looking at Alex over mother's shoulder. The woman in question (and if he were honest, the one he wanted to hear those secrets about what kind of child she had been) was currently rapidly mouthing apologies to him. Well at least that was something. But when the hold lingered and Strand grimaced, Alex stepped forward. 

“Mom,” she chided quickly her eyes on her mother. “What did we say about not hugging Dr. Strand? Didn’t we say that we weren’t hugging him?”

“Oh, I’m sure Richard doesn’t mind.” Alice said quickly and she shook her head at her daughter who was quickly trying to get close enough to catch her arm. 

There was a soft masculine voice that disagreed with her. Or at the very least offered her a distinct distraction. “Alice, honey, I could do with a drink and Dr. Strand seems like a man that has a good scotch ready.”

Alex looked like she could kiss her father while she quickly chirped out. “He does.” Richard breathed and he nodded just once before Alice released her hold on him so he could head over to the bar to pour him a glass. Both of them a glass. He wasn’t anywhere near drunk enough for this. 

Meanwhile Alex was talking to her mother in low tones while Richard offered Danny a glass of scotch. Following Richard’s line of vision Danny just asked softly, “they’re both forces of nature aren’t they?” Letting out the shock exhale of a laugh that made Alex look at him with that same quick grin that she always did when she heard him make it. 

He thought that he wasn’t responding but after a moment Richard felt the corners of his lips turn upwards into a wry smirk. He attempted to draw it back but he noticed Danny smiling in return at him. Clearing his throat and taking a sip of his scotch Richard just agreed. “That they are, Mr. Reagan. That they are.”

“Just call me Danny, Dr. Strand. Everyone else does now that I’m retired.” Retired from the police force, Richard remembered. It was one of the things that they’d talked about that night in California; how Alex knew how to talk to cops mostly and how Stan Collins was a jerk and an outlier. “I’d say that she settles down eventually but I try not to lie.” Danny’s laugh was more light and jovial and he gave Richard a soft smile that was very Alex indeed. 

“Of course Alex doesn’t either. My little girl, she has what she calls ‘a distinct lack of chill’ and she comes by it honestly. She may not look like her mother, but she’s definitely her mother’s daughter.”

“Then I suppose I should brace for more hugging, I suppose.” Trying to picture it was easier than Richard thought. He knew Alex hugged so many people in her life but the most she’d done with him was place her hand on his arm and shoulder and squeezed. For all of that however, maybe it was journalism ethics or what Charlie had called ‘his vibe’ now. Hugs weren’t something that he’d entertained wanting until now. 

Thankfully, Danny was giving him something else to think about. “Don’t worry, Dr. Strand. My little girl has warned me in no uncertain terms that I’m not to the give you ‘the shovel talk’. Alex even went so far as to threaten hockey and coming home for Christmas.”

There was no denying the pure puzzlement on his face when he just echoed back: “the shovel talk?” It was a question even if he didn’t want it to be and suddenly Strand felt quite old indeed. Even if he and Danny were the same age. Uncomfortably so in this moment. Was that something that parents were meant to do for their daughters? The twenty years he had estranged from Charlie were a stark reminder of the difference between himself and Alex’s family. 

Alex must have caught the look on his face because as she had so often lately she was there to save him from the situation. “Richard,” she began and he was never so glad to hear his name from her lips as he was in that moment for more reasons than he wanted to consider. “I’m reminding you to check dinner like you asked.” He hadn’t of course but that was beside the point at the moment. He knew an out when he saw it and he was glad to take it. 

“Excuse us, Danny.” He said with a slight and wry smile, “I’ve discovered that Alex is quite good at causing kitchen disasters even when she isn’t cooking. If best make certain that it doesn’t happen again.” The amusement in Danny was practically audible in the same way it was from his daughter as he nodded in agreement. 

As soon as they were in the kitchen, Alex looked at him once more and spoke quickly and earnestly even if her tone was low. “I am so sorry. I told her not too but if you think I’m bad? You should see her. She does it all the time.” There was a little bit of a thin grin, “at least she didn’t do the thing that she does to Nic and pinch his cheeks. You should ask him about it. He hates it so much.”

Nodding absently, Richard stirred the wine reduction and watched it coat the back of a spoon. “Yes.” He answered, clear he hadn’t heard her and she stepped forward and touched his arm gently to bring him back to the conversation. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

“It’s okay. Trust me know one knows what it’s like dealing with my mom more than me.”

“Well,” The word was dragged out in an amused tone. “I suppose I can see where you get it from then.” Alex didn’t bother to deny it. She couldn’t not with how long they’d known one another. And not when she’d called him eleven times for an interview. 

He added in a slightly puzzled tone and the look that Richard Strand got when he was trying to avoid asking about a pop culture matter. It was a look that Alex met with a bit lip so she didn’t grin at him and earn the annoyed and hurt look in response. The dance between them around that had happened enough now that it was reflex for her. “What’s ‘the shovel talk’? Your father said that you told him not to give it to me.”

Alex colored as deep as the wine reduction that he was vaguely stirring and she just hissed, “oh my god. I’m going to kill him.” Adding through her teeth, she refused to look at him. “You really don’t need to know.”

“Alex…” Her name was a warning and they both knew that he would just take out his phone and look it up directly in front of her. That too was something Richard had done before.

“Yes, Yes, fine.” Taking a bracing deep breath Alex avoided looking anywhere even in Strand’s direction. “The shovel talk is what kids these days call it when someone who cares about a person, in this case my dad, tells someone he thinks is involved with his daughter that if they hurt them then they have a gun and a shovel. It’s a ‘don’t you dare hurt the person I care about’ thing. My dad’s a cop so he’s doesn’t normally feel the need to do it. Being himself was something he considered enough but I wanted to make sure he also didn’t assume we are dating or something like that. But my mom can be persuasive.” 

“Well, I know just how persuasive a Reagan woman can be…” The wry smile is back for a moment, before it faded quickly once more. “But I suppose it’s too late for that.”

Frowning at him, Alex just tilted her head for a moment before she reached over and turned off the burner below the sauce. “What? What are you talking about?”

Both of them were silent for a long moment and Alex reached out and turned off the other burners on the stovetop, watching him with a frown. For sometime now she’s been good at telling when there was something wrong with him and right now there was. She also knew that if she’d stared at him for long enough then he might actually say something she wanted to know. That development was new though, coming from the conversation that they’d had about trust after she got back from Turkey. 

Her parents didn’t know about that yet. Alex hadn’t felt the need to be yelled at like she had when she was a teenager and went to a festival over a weekend. She should probably tell him not to say anything about that too come to think of it. 

“I mean. I already have. Hurt you.” Strand’s voice was soft and he didn’t look at her. “I didn’t realize it at the time it was happening but when I went back and listened to the show I realized that I had.”

“Richard.” Alex’s voice was soft and she reached over and rested her hand on his arm. “We hurt each other. God knows we’ve both got blame in this.” And before he can respond she added, “if you say there’s no such thing as god right now I’m going to slap you.”

Giving her his signature actual huffy laugh, Strand looked at her then. “Well, I suppose that’s fair then. But for what it’s worth, I am sorry that I dragged you into this. And for all of it.” Alex knew what he meant by all of it without him explaining. Everything from manipulating the show to curating the black tapes for the connections and what scares her, for leaving without a word and all of it. It was there in his face. 

“You didn’t drag me into anything, Richard. I dragged myself with eleven calls and Chicago and everything else. This isn’t your fault. Whatever else happens with Warren and all of it, we’re going to face it together. The center of it with you, right?”

The huffy laugh came again and Alex beamed at him trying to remember if she had ever unlocked two in a row before. She didn’t think so. “You’re never going to let me live that down that I said it, are you, Ms. Reagan?”

“Oh, not on your life Dr. Strand.” She was laughing too, amused at the idea. “And once the show hits tomorrow no one else is gonna either.” Despite the warning, Richard just kept watching her, his amusement evident in the warmth of his blue eyes. Funny how she had gotten used to how warm his eyes were when he looked at her now. Well, other than when he was so furious with her when she returned from Turkey. 

Turkey. Right. “Um. Just so you know, I didn’t tell my parents about my little trip so please don’t bring it up, okay?”

Well, some of the warmth in his eyes hardened and his voice became sharper. “‘Your little trip’ is that what we’re calling it now when you completely disregard your own personal safety and fly half way around the world in order to meet with an actual confessed, convicted, delusional murderer who is on the run from a mental hospital?!”

As so often happened when Richard’s voice when cold, Alex compensated by going hotter. “I have no interest in having this argument again, Richard. It’s done. I’ve apologized.”

“You’ve apologized and admitted that you would do it again! You have refused to accept that the actions that you undertake have consequences, Alex. What if something had happened and you were twenty hours away from home? What if something happened to you? What if something happened to you and I didn’t even know it?! What if I lost you like…?” He was being emotional and he knew it. And they both knew who she would have been lost like.

Stepping closer to him, Richard was pinned between her and the countertop behind him, not allowing him any space to escape as he refused to meet her eyes. He didn’t open them, not until he felt the warmth of her palm against his cheek and a fresh burst of her perfume from her inner wrist hit him. Breathing deeply, he opened his eyes as she peered intently at him, just starting with “hey. Listen.”

Her voice was soft but certain all of the typical Alex Reagan determination in it. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise okay?”

“Alex,” her name is a sigh filled with everything he doesn’t allow him to say as he reaches up to cover her hand with his own. “No one can promise that. Not and keep it, anyway.” There’s a sadness in the words, and also an almost desperate wish that he could believe it in his voice. As much as Richard Strand can believe in anything anymore. 

“I can. I’m me remember? Eleven calls just to get you to call me back the first time. I’m not going to go anywhere, okay?”

“Alex…” he sighed her name softly, and maybe if there was one thing that he believed in now, he believed in her. Just her. But it wasn’t something that he could put into words by any means. And for more than one reason. As soon as he left that sentence dangling there like his heart held between open hands, Alex kissed him. 

The kiss wasn’t soft, it wasn’t a question. It wasn’t quick either. The kiss was all Alex: fire and determination, steel over a core of heat. He groaned, wrapping his arms tightly around her and pulling her flush with his chest. The kiss went on longer than was probably proper. Unfortunately that also meant that it had gone on long enough that a masculine voice softly cleared his throat, causing the two to separate and Alex’s cheeks to burn as red as the dress that she was wearing. “I don’t mean to interrupt,” Danny said softly, keeping his voice low. “But you’ve been gone for a while and your mother was starting to get nosy.”

“Oh god,” Alex groaned, and her hand automatically wound around Richard’s by way of apology. Strand was just standing there in a stunned sort of silence. 

“I think,” Danny began quickly, “I’m just going to grab some more wine while you two keep doing whatever you’re doing.” He paused for a moment before he added, “I am definitely not drunk enough to deal with your gloating mother when she gets to be right.”


End file.
